


Say I’m Better Than You Left Me

by gelbes_gilatier



Series: this time baby I'll be bullet proof [4]
Category: The Avengers
Genre: Aftermath, Brooding, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 14:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelbes_gilatier/pseuds/gelbes_gilatier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff, after the fiasco in Moscow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say I’m Better Than You Left Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts).



> [Holiday Fic Request Meme](http://gelbes-gilatier.livejournal.com/336509.html). Alrighty, here's another one. **ArwenLune** , I hope you don't mind that I made this a sequel to _Secrets From My American Dreams_ :S But it fit so well that it practically wrote itself. I hope you like it!

**Say I’m Better Than You Left Me **

  
_  
“Say it ain’t so, say I’m happy again_   
_Say it’s over, say I’m dreaming_   
_Say I’m better than you left me_   
_Say you’re sorry, I can take it_   


  
_  
Say you’ll wait, say you won’t_   
_Say you love me, say you don’t_   
_I can make my own mistakes_   
_Let it bend before it breaks.”_   


_Brandi Carlile, “Before it Breaks”_

  
She messed up, plain and simple. It’s not the first time and it will not be the last time that it happens. That’s the business. Messy spy business will never be clean. She knows that. It’s not what’s bothering her. It’s not what made her retreat to the farthest corner in the Lear Jet that S.H.I.E.L.D. chartered for them to get them back to New York.

It’s the Winter Soldier. It’s that she saw through him from the first moment. It’s that she couldn’t stop him from blowing up half the US embassy, anyway. It’s that he could do this to her, to Rogers, even to Clint. It’s that she knew what was going to happen and couldn’t do anything against it. It’s that it wasn’t the first time something like this happened.

It’s ridiculous and that’s why she’s curled up in the seat in the farthest corner of the jet, her knees drawn to her chest and her head leaned against the window, cold and hard and unforgiving. A god, she could take on, a god she could twist and turn around and bend to her will. A human, _that_ human, she couldn’t twist and turn and bend to her will if she bend over backwards hard enough to snap.

If Superman and Kryptonite are real, then the Winter Soldier is hers.

He was her mentor, teacher, something close to a friend at a time. People thought he was her lover, too and for a while they were right. The red in her ledger is of him, for him, by him. Lots of it, at least. She added a lot of it herself, after she severed her ties to the Red Room, to him.

The Winter Soldier and the severing are why she is still broken when it comes to relationships. They are why she still doesn’t really do affection or closeness. They are why she doesn’t believe in friends. She believes in equals, partners, enemies, lovers. She believes in physical intimacy and belonging. She doesn’t believe in friends.

She knows that Clint does, though, and Rogers, too and this is why she shut them out. This is why she is sitting as far away from them as possible. She is aware of her surroundings, of course. Rogers is trying to catch up on sleep or pretending to, anyway and Clint is trying to stay awake and watching the entire Star Wars saga from painful beginning to sappy ending or pretending to, anyway.

The flight is quiet and she has too much time on her hand to think about failure and her part in it, the part of her stupid, stupid head and heart and she doesn’t even know which one she’d rather do without. There’s a rumor on the helicarrier, of course, that she doesn’t even _have_ the latter, that she’s hasn’t devoured Clint yet only because she still likes to fuck him and sometimes, she wished it were that easy. It used to be, before the god and the battle but since then things have been complicated and she’d love to blame her failure on it. She knows that’s bullshit, of course.

And she would absolutely continue trying to find reasons why she isn’t qualified to keep hunting the Winter Soldier when her phone rings. The one that only Coulson and Fury can dial and she’s about to pull it out, when she hears Rogers say in a low, tired voice, “Don’t answer it, Natasha.”

She frowns, more because he called her by her first name than because he told her not to answer because when she looks at the screen, she knows that Rogers is absolutely right. The number on the display is neither Coulson’s nor Fury’s and the fact alone that there _is_ a number makes her spider senses tingle, to borrow a phrase from that Peter Parker guy.

She doesn’t touch the phone again, just ignores it until it stops ringing and when the plane doesn’t explode right away, she grants herself a moment of leaning back and closing her eyes. Which, of course, Clint uses to make himself known as well. She knows that in the short moment that she didn’t have them in her sights, he must have nodded at Rogers in that “I’ll take it from here buddy, thanks” way he likes to display when he wants to tell people to let her off their hook. In a way, it’s almost endearing.

She still doesn’t really do affection or closeness, though.

Clint, of course, does. He’s her opposite, polar sometimes, her antithesis in many ways. He’s her anti Winter Soldier. He’s the only one who can get away with sitting down next to her when all she wants to do is put her head against the cold hard window and think about her failure.

He’s the only one who takes her refusal of doing affection and closeness for what it is. The only one who can get away with piercing right through her walls and make her care about him. She doesn’t mind Stark and Rogers and Banner and Thor, she even likes them most of the time but Clint is the only one allowed to make her care about him.

They’re both broken in too many ways and their broken pieces fit amazingly well, better than the others’ broken pieces whose raw edges sometimes grind against hers, even Rogers’ and that’s why she doesn’t tell him off or push him away when he sits down next to her matter-of-factly, no-nonsense, no butts allowed.

For a while, he just sits there and when he’s worn her down enough, he turns sideways, to put his naked feet up on the seat, his right side against the backrest and his back against the aisle side armrest. He doesn’t _force_ her to accommodate her position to his, he just makes a clear suggestion, take it or leave it and almost against her will, she takes it. It’s always the same with him and sometimes she’s tired enough to resist him.

Today is not sometimes. Today is the usual, and in a weird, twisted way, she’s thankful for that.

Because in the end, he always does enough affection and closeness for the both of them and that’s why they work. That’s why she leans back against his chest and lets him put his arms around her shoulders and put a kiss against her temple, after all. She’s still broken when it comes to relationships but he is, too and they can work with that.

She doesn’t smile because she still messed it up but she closes her eyes and shifts into position, fitting against him, anyway. Because they can work with that. Even with Rogers and the Winter Soldier in the mix, they can work with that, and that’s all she needs for the moment. That’s all she’s ever gonna need and it’s enough for her, for now. Everything else, they can worry about when they have to. They can work with that.


End file.
